As time entered the late 1990s, when Bill Clinton officially began his second term, American society was undergoing an interesting cultural transformation.
In films, novels, stage plays, music, and sports programs, the heroes and idols beloved and pursued by audiences were undergoing subtle changes.
The once strong, perfect, classically heroic figures like those in ancient Greek sculptures were slowly losing favor, as evident in the protagonists of literary works.
The 1994 film, "The Story of Ah Gan," which achieved great success by featuring a fool as the main character involved in many significant events of modern American history, hinted at this trend.
Released the same year and initially lackluster at the box office, but later gaining a good reputation, "The Shawshank Redemption" focused on escape from prison and confinement, also a symbolic gesture.
By 1996, a novel titled "Fight Club" was published, which immediately made an impact, winning the Northwest Pacific Booksellers Award and the Oregon Best Novel Award, later acquired by 20th Century Fox for film adaptation.
The novel tells an anti-traditional suspense story where the protagonist Joe is an ordinary little employee whose immense stress from work and life leads to psychological illness. Despite attending many therapy groups, his symptoms only alleviate but never disappear.
On a work trip, Joe meets a friend named Tyler Durden, whose image, job, and personality are entirely different from Joe’s. Under Durden’s guidance, they start the underground organization Fight Club, aiming to specially help people relieve stress and emotions.
Fight Club quickly spreads, and the organization grows increasingly large. At this point, Tyler’s ambition further reveals itself as he organizes the members of Fight Club to perform a series of acts of revenge against society.
Just at this time, Tyler suddenly disappears, and Joe suddenly realizes Tyler never existed, and everything was done by himself.
His mental issues had reached the point of schizophrenia, directly manifesting as another personality driving him to complete a series of incredible deeds.
This novel reflects the "masculinity" anxiety among urban male groups in modern American society at that time. With increasingly modernized city living, the toughness, muscles, loyalty, and adventurous spirit of classical heroes increasingly became a fantasy, existing only in the mirage of people’s imagination.
Men could only witness the existence of classical heroes in literary works, movies, TV shows, novels, and sports arenas. When they turned off the TV, were woken by alarms the next day to put on work clothes and ties, took a car to the office or factory for work, and after work faced endless household chores, marital frictions, and children’s cries, reality told them repeatedly that the era of heroes was over, and no one was a Superman.
The tide of consumerism even further made money the sole criterion of one’s success; whoever earned the most money, bought the better car, or lived in better houses was successful and held status.
The virtues of traditional heroes, like kindness and compassion, were seen as weakness and incompetence, where altruism and courage to uphold justice turned into a social instability factor, and the courage for exploration and adventure received the comment, "What’s the point, it can’t make money."
Under this social trend, some people attempted to re-establish the image of traditional heroes but received little response, and more people, especially the youth, outright rebelled against tradition, flipping the bird at those traditional heroes, along with challenges against traditional rules and overall social authority.
"Fight Club" represents this, and the novel’s author, Chuck Palahniuk, is from Oregon Portland and graduated from the University of Oregon. Unsurprisingly, he is a fan of the Portland Trail Blazers and Ah Gan.
After the novel became famous, it sparked widespread discussion in the literary world. When Chuck Palahniuk was asked how the image of Tyler Durden was created, Chuck Palahniuk mentioned, "I referenced the image of Ah Gan. I dare say, Ah Gan is every Portland boy’s dream. Ever since he threw Bill Lambier to the ground in 1985, I tremble all over when I recall those exciting matches of Ah Gan."
"However, after I turned 30, when I began to busily make a living every day, I realized I could never be Ah Gan, not even one-tenth of him. And then one day, I can’t recall which day it was; it might have been day 245 of being 30 years old, or day 8 of being 31. All my youthful fantasies about heroes disappeared. By the time I suddenly realized it, he had likely been gone for a while, just like Tyler Durden disappeared in the novel."
"Of course, I am still an Ah Gan fan, and I will always support him. I’m happy he’s made a comeback. My motivation for writing novels is so I can buy tickets to watch his games. But I believe there won’t be another Ah Gan."
Palahniuk does not forget to add that he clarifies his identity as a fan of the Portland Trail Blazers and Ah Gan.
Gan Guoyang and Jordan are the best, perhaps the last of the Classical heroes in this era’s sports world, especially Gan Guoyang, who is stronger and cleaner than Jordan.
He embodied the traditional hero to the extreme, and even his failure and departure, like the heroes of Ancient Greece, were due to fate rather than personal downfall.